Battle Mode

This page acts as a subpage to Kishin Douji Zenki 3 - Tenchi Meidou, the third SNES game in the series.

The Battle Mode is one of two gameplay modes, the other one being the Board Game Mode.

Tenchi Meidou's Battle Mode is basically what happens when two hostile characters encounter each other and start fighting each other. This mode features roulette styled card battles with various elemental attacks and defense moves, which need to be used strategically in order to defeat the foe.

Contents

 * 1. General notes
 * The basic mechanics of Battle Mode:
 * 2. Health and Attack Points
 * The relevance of health and attack points in battle, as well as how to use attack points effectively
 * 3. Cards
 * The game's attack and defense cards and how to use them in battle
 * 4. Roulette, Elements and Notes
 * This section covers the Card Roulette, elemental resistances and weaknesses as well as Multiplayer Notes

General notes


If you engage a foe on the overworld the game switches from Board Game Mode into battle mode. Here, you will play as Demon God Zenki, fighting various Hyouijuu and other characters.

You start out with Zenki and Chiaki, but only Zenki is able to actually fight in Battle Mode, yet over the course of the story, he will be joined by Miki Souma, Anju, Goki, the Inugami Roh and Chimaru, giving the player a wider range of strategic choices and various Board Game Mode abilities and spells.

Odd Party Members
While Anju also does join Zenki and his friends in the manga, only the anime and Tenchi Meidou display her with some kind of fighting abilities. As the game mixes content from the anime and the manga, this game's Anju might be both Souma's damsel in the distress from the manga and later on the mind controlled servant of Karuma.

It is still unknown why Roh and Chimaru join the party, as Roh is obviously based on his way more reckless manga counterpart, which explains the whole surfing through air thing and other character quirks like showing off on the Board Game Mode map, which are absent in the anime. Chimaru never joins the good guys in the manga, but as Roh joins them, Chimaru might just have jumped the train and decided to follow his master.

Basic Mechanics
The following content of this section explains the hud icons and basic mechanics of the Battle Mode.

Health and Attack Points
Basic Information=

Visit this section's tabbers, if you want to know more about the health and power bars seen in the hud menu shown in the upper left and right corners in Battle Mode.

First things first. The two bars on the left are your character's health and power bars while the ones on the right are the ones of your enemy.

That's unless you are playing multiplayer mode, where the bars on the left are for the first player and the ones on the right for the second player.

Same goes for the roulettes on the bottom of the screen which are for choosing your actions in battle, which are covered in the Card Roulette-section seen further down this page.


 * -|Health=

Health Bar


The health bar is stationed at the top of the screen.

It is depicted as a thick, yellow bar, which gradually turns red as the character receives damage.

A number, showing the actual lifepoints of your character, can be seen beside the bar. Just like the bar, this number will also decrease when the character is hurt.

The whole thing is pretty much self explaining: If you run out of health (aka your health reaches 0), your character dies.

Main Game
All of your characters being dead will make you lose the stage and automatically restart it.

Multiplayer
If your character dies in multiplayer, it will either end the game (in battle mode only matches) or force you to lose a turn (in board game mode matches). If your character falls in battle, he/she will be controlled by the opponent that defeated them on the next turn of the game's board game mode. After that turn, your character will be revived and can be controlled like usual again.


 * -|Attack Points=

Power Bar
The power bar is stationed below the health bar.

It is a thin bar that usually contains a green stripe that gradually empties as a character uses single strikes and fills up if they absorb their opponents attacks.

Below it are two numbers. The one on the left shows your current anmount of attack points while the right one shows the character's maximum attack points.

If the attack points are maxed out, the power bar will start flashing pink and you will be able to use the Om card to oneshot your foe regardless of their current health or shield.

If you use to many single strikes in a row, you will run out of attack points and will be unable to use any more single strikes. You will then need to use an absorb card to replenish your attack points by absorbing your enemies attacks, although this will only work if your opponent doesn't counter with a single strike as well.

Cards
In General=

Cards are a main gameplay mechanic. They have different elements and can be stacked (up to 4 cards) to create more powerful attacks or stat boosts.

There are attack and defense cards, which have different properties in battle.

The attack cards are pretty simple:
 * -|How to use cards in battle=

A character usually has a favorite element, for example Light in Zenki's case, and multiple other elements.

Their favorite element will be their most powerful one, dealing the most damage to their foes, but also the one that appears the least on their roulette.

Generally the more often an element appears on a characters' roulette, the weaker it's offensive power will be for that specific character. The only known exception of this is Vasara, who can only use Physical cards and nothing else.

Though this is only the case for the character's attack cards, the defense cards are different, but the will be mentioned later.

If the character uses one card or two of the same element, those cards will translate into one or, in the latter case, two non-elemental single strikes, which generally deal very little damage and will drain the character's attack points.

But they aren't completely useless. Single strikes can be used to break an opponents yellow shield before attacking with a stronger three card combo. If the opponent instead has a red shield, using a single strike will prevent them from absorbing a larger anmount of attack points and negate the red shield.

Again Vasara is pretty much the only exception of this general rule as his single strikes deal great anmounts of damage and drain little of his attack points.

If you want to break a shield, use an attack card of one element to break the shield, but then use a different element to use a combo as otherwise it will count as one move and will be shielded or absorbed, putting you at a disadvantage.

Defense cards on the other hand need to be used more strategically:

A defense card's use heavily relies on the current situation and needs to be used wisely.

For example, if you are low on attack points, it would be advised to use an absorb card to absorb some damage and turn it into attack points. If you think that your opponent is going to use a three or four card combo, use a shield card to reduce the damage dealt to your character.

If your attack points are maxed out, use it to your advantage to oneshot your foe with the Om card.

You can also use seal cards to reduce your opponent's four card combo to a three card one by sealing one of their cards or to seal your opponent's shield, absorb or Om card to prevent them from protecting themselves or oneshotting you.

You don't necessarily need to pick the seal card instantly, you can also throw it in after using one or two single strikes.

The defense cards are already very special on their own, yet there are more differences.

Just like attack cards defense cards can be stacked, too. One or two cards of the same type result in a Stage 1 shield, three cards of the same type as a Stage 2 shield and four of the same type as a Stage 3 shield.

You can, of cause, use up to four seal cards to make your opponent waste their turn by sealing all their cards or use four shield cards in a row to protect yourself against four single attacks.

Don't try this in the main game (How to fail with the Om card):

Yet, drawing more than one Om card or using it without maxed out attack points makes no sense.

If you use the Om card when your attack points aren't maxed out, it will turn into a non-elemental, special, single strike that will waste all your attack points on an attack with varying strength. It's power will be dependant on your character's max attack points. Using it at almost full attack points will generally cause it to deal half that damage.

For example, it would deal about 150 points of damage if Zenki used the Om card with close to maxed out attack points. The only advantage about this is that the Om card will deal fixed anmounts of damage, unaffected by your oppenents element.

But this is generally a waste of attack points, as it leaves you without attack points if your opponent survives, making it very dangerous in boss battles or the general main game.

Now back to drawing more than one Om card. Yes, this one is possible as well, yet if you don't use an absorb card after using the first Om card, there will be no attack points left, so all follow up Om cards will just go unused, allowing your opponent to smack you around while leaving you defenseless.


 * -|Attack Cards=

Attack Cards

 * -|Defense Cards=

Defense Cards

 * -|Miscellaneous=

Roulette, Elements and Notes
Main= This section contains various information.

It not only explains how the card roulette works and some basics on the characters' elements, but also features notes on the limitation of playable characters in multiplayer mode.


 * -|Card Roulette=

Card Roulette
All characters have a card roulette, which allows them to select various attack and defense cards.

The left side shows the character's available defense cards, while the right side shows their attack cards.

Cards from the left side can be chosen by pressing the Y-Button, while cards from the right side are chosen by pressing the X-Button.

Pressing the A-Button confirms the choice and starts the turn. If the opponent has chosen some cards as well, they can join the action by pressing the A-Button or skip their turn and keep their drawn cards by pressing the B-Button.

Almost every character has a different anmount of cards in their card roulette and if they only have one card, the card will appear both in their defense and attack card slots of the roulette.

This is regardless of the usual position of the card, causing for example the physical card to both appear in Vasara's defense and attack card slots despite being an attack card. Something similar happens with Haira and Mekira who only possess the Om card, which also appears in both slots despite being a defense card.


 * -|Elements=

Elemental Types and various information
All characters have at least one element. While most characters possess at least the physical element, there are also exceptions which sport the Om element instead.

While the physical element allows the character to use a physical attack, it is usually their weakest offensive move, regardless of the anmount of physical cards in their card roulette.

Now to the characters that only have either the physical or the Om element.

The characters that only have the physical element can obviously use only that kind of attack, while the ones that only have the Om element usually start out with maxed out attack points.

So far, there's no known way to reduce an opponent's attack points in battle. The only way characters waste their attack points is on their own account, which is by using Om or a shield breaker single strike (one or two cards).

Now to the other elements:

Obviously most characters have more than just one element and often more than just one type of defense card. One might also notice that some cards appear multiple times in the roulette.

As you already know, the physical element is (almost) never a character's strongest element, even if they have only one physical card. But it's different for their other cards:

While a character's strongest attack element is the one they have least in the roulette, it is the opposite for their elemental resistances, where their strongest defense is against the element they have most.

So being hit while having one elemental card halves the damage your character receives by the opponent's attack, something similar can be said for attacking, where having two cards halves the damage your character deals to the opponent.

This obviously goes on into both directions, so having more cards of the same type increases your defense against the specific element, while having less cards increases your offense with that kind of attack.

The same goes for the defensive cards of the shield and absorb types, which get stronger the more cards you have. But the defense cards are still special as the Om, seal and spell cards are unaffected by this and will behave the same for all characters regardless of their anmount of these three types of cards in their roulette.

Also the anmount of attack points you have doesn't make a difference in how much damage your character deals to his/her opponent, only the anmount of cards (of the same element) drawn at the same time does.

Accordingly your character can have one or multiple of the following elements:


 * [[File:Attack Earth.png]] Earth
 * [[File:Attack Fire.png]] Fire
 * [[File:Attack Ice.png]] Ice
 * [[File:Attack Light.png]] Light
 * [[File:Attack Physical.png]] Physical
 * [[File:Attack Wind.png]] Wind
 * [[File:Defense Om.png]] Om

If Om is used for attacking an opponent while having less than full attack points, it will count as an elementless single strike shield breaker, which will drain your character's attack points. That's unless they have no attack points left, in which case they gain 10 attack points instead.

It is still unknown why the latter happens, but it might be meant as some kind of emergency refill for characters that can use Om, but can't use absorb cards.

Elemental Resistances and Weaknesses
So far, there isn't much known about the individual elemental resistances and weaknesses, but it's very likely that the characters either sport different attack and defense stats or even actual elemental weaknesses.

Currently the only proofs for this might be Zenki oneshotting another Zenki with his Rudra and Haira and Mekira being very resistant to physical attacks, so it's still uncertain what is actually happening here.

At first, characters that only have the Om element seem to take no damage from Stage 1 and Stage 2 physical attacks (shield brakers), but actually they do take damage. After hitting them a few times, they will have lost 1 point of their health.

Attacking them with a three card physical combo, will cause them to take as much damage as any other (non-solely Om elemental) character would take from a Stage 1 physical attack.

This part of the article still needs more research and more content will be added sooner or later...


 * -|Multiplayer notes=

Multiplayer mode notes
In the multiplayer mode, you can play as any character who appeared in the main game, but unlike Den Ei Rai Bu, the game automatically choses a stage. Again, the stage won't affect your character's or the enemy's performance in battle.

In this mode, you can either play against the computer, a second player or even watch a fight between two computer players.

More about the possible multiplayer setups for Battle Mode and Board Game Mode can be read in the main article's tabber Multiplayer Setups.